The present invention relates to a guidance system for a mobile object such as robot, and more particularly to a guidance system which can move a mobile object to a destination in adaptation to an environment upon understanding the surrounding situation.
Most of robots presently operating are used under well-ordered environments such as factories. In recent years, however, mobile robots usable also outside the well-ordered environments hve been required. In order to realize the requirement, a robot needs to be given an autonomous moving function.
An example of such a mobile robot is disclosed in a literature by Moravec, entitled "The Stanford Cart and The CMU Rover" published on Feb. 24, 1983. With the mobile robot of this type, an image obtained with a television camera is processed to extract the feature points of the image, a three-dimensional object distribution involving a direction and a distance is calculated on the basis of the distribution of the feature points, and a distance to an object is found on the basis of the calculated result, whereupon a guidance signal is delivered to the mobile robot proper. In such image processing, complicated calculatons are necessary for the detection of the feature points and the extraction of the three-dimensional information. It has therefore been difficult to move the mobile object at high speed and at high precision.